TMNT (1987) Season 6, Part 1: Review at AIPT

An unremarkable season with a bunch of unremarkable episodes. I rather liked "Rock Around the Block", though, if only because it wrenched General Traag back from obscurity. "Sword of Yurikawa" was an alright episode, too. But man, the rest in this batch of 6 were pretty dodgy, with "Adventures in Turtle-Sitting" at the very bottom of the pile.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Krangestein Lives was a great episode, I'm surprised you don't care for that one. Seeing Krang's Android body go rogue and use all its special abilities and devices was great. Mikey's videogame obsession tied right into the Krang Android body plot so I don't see why you feel it was an extra plot.

Also is it just me or did Season 6 tend to bring some more action back to the show? There are a lot more fight scenes or action moments then in episodes from Seasons 4-5. We get to see Splinter fight Shredder, Leo fight Krang, Irma punch out some Foot Soldiers, the Destructor-X robot blow up a bunch of stuff...

I also agree that "Rock around the Block," "Sword of Yurikawa" and "Return of the Turtleoid" was pretty good episodes.

In fact I thought this was a solid batch of episodes aside from the "Adventures in Turtle-sitting" episode.

I personally thought Season 6 turned things around, at least compared to the seasonal rot of the prior two seasons. Although, I'm more appreciative of the season, as it would be James Avery's final full season before being departing for good in early Season 7. And like the previous commenter, I did appreciate the switch to more action, which was long overdue. I barely remember Season 6 as a child, so I'm also appreciative of the DVD set, seeing the season really for the first time.

And Krangenstein Lives works well enough, as this time, Krang got to do his inner James Whale and say "it's alive!" And it's been a while since the robot body got to do anything in a story sense, so enjoy it while you could. Same with Shredder being unmasked, as this episode would be the last time for that, as well.

And agreed about Adventures in Turtle-Sitting. I could live with all that, except for the Mendelsohns' clowning of Bebop/Rocksteady. At least, when David Wise does it, he tries to imbue some actual irony with their idiocy. Fortunately, the pair make up for that nonsense in Shreeka's Revenge (or the reason why you should tolerate Season 6, because it was quite good). Meanwhile, as much as I liked Krang's plan to eliminate all the New York crime bosses, it felt weird to see him go so small scale, given his general warlord status. As in, "hard to believe it's the same character who planned to vaporize Baxter without a second thought, 4 seasons earlier."

Then again, that horse left the barn when we saw him watching soap operas in Season 3. Maybe being on Earth so much has mellowed him. Well, that and the censors, of course.

And Return of the Turtleoid proved as much as I like Kerma (or Jan Rabson's voice acting), he's quite the doom magnet, isn't he? Thankfully, his final appearance makes up for that, but that's some time away.